2016 Technology and Aging Summit

On November 10, 2016, LeadingAge of Georgia and the Georgia Gerontology Society hosted the Technology and Aging Summit at Georgia Tech. Wireless RERC team members joined the planning team to coordinate a conference program designed to educate, engage attendees, and result in concepts to address some of the challenges or needs identified in advance by local older adults and people with disabilities. Attendees included experts in aging services, technologists, design/computing/engineering students, academic researchers, practitioners, industry members, and consumers.

Designing Solutions to Improve the Lives of Older Adults

Following a keynote by Majd Alwan, LeadingAge Center for Aging Services Technologies, speaking about existing and emerging technologies to support healthy aging, the Wireless RERC team led attendees through Rapid-fire Brainstorming Breakouts. Participants divided into groups based on domains of interest determined in advance:

  • Loneliness and Isolation (social connectedness and shared activities)
  • Nutrition (maintaining a healthy diet and dietary restrictions)
  • Physical Ability (managinging ability and community accessibility)
  • Managing Chronic Disease and Communicating with healthcare Providers
  • Fear of Falls
  • Understanding and Accessing Information
  • Healthcare at Home and Caregiving

Each group learned about a need from "Challenge Champions," who shared stories of their own challenges or that of others. Then groups set out to further define the problem and develop concepts to address that problem/need. Teams used a workbook to guide their progress and to capture their ideas at the end of each section. After two hours of effort, eight teams presented their progress through a poster template.

Materials

The following materials were developed for this workshop:

  • Innovative Design Creation Process Workbook - this workbook provides a framework for designing concepts through a process based on the engineering design process :
    1. Meet your team
    2. Define a problem
    3. Define design requirements
    4. Design a concept
    5. Refine your concept
    6. Present your work
  • Scribe Workbook - the scribe workbook consists of worksheets designed for teams to summarize their work at each step. These worksheets could then be attached to the poster region for ease in presentation
  • Poster Template - this template was intended to be flexible, while allowing teams to easily present their design process, including areas for Team member names, problem definition, and concept description and sketches

Disclaimer

The contents of this website were developed under a grant from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR grant number 90RE5025-01-00). NIDILRR is a Center within the Administration for Community Living (ACL), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The contents of this website do not necessarily represent the policy of NIDILRR, ACL, HHS, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government.